Emotion and cognition in vicarious instigation research

Abstract.— It is argued that the vicarious instigation research would benefit from integrating phenomena and distinctions acknowledged within emotion psychology and cognitive psychology. In particular, suggestions are made which aim at increasing the specificity of terminological, methodological, and interpretational aspects of vicarious instigation research.     

Emotion regulation consumption: When feeling better is the aim

This research explored how individuals regulate their emotions by consuming products of a hedonic nature. We introduce a new construct to the consumer research literature, emotion regulation consumption (ERC), which involves the consumption or purchase of a good or service for the purposes of alleviating, repairing, or managing an emotion in the short term. Specifically, ERC processes were examined for four discrete emotions – sadness, amusement, contentment, and fear/anxiety. Additionally, this research demonstrates how an individual's ability to use internal cognitive control processes, or “emotion regulation strategies,” to manage emotions may differentially moderate the effects of emotions on hedonic consumption. Important theoretical and managerial implications are offered:

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Emotion,cognition, and decision making

We examine two explanations of the subliminal affective priming effect. The feelings-as-information model (Schwarz &; Clore, 1988) holds that judgements are based on perceptible feelings. Hence, affective influences depend on the source to which feelings are (mis)attributed. In contrast, the affective primary hypothesis (Zajonc, 1980) suggests that affective influences should resist attributional interventions. This is because the affective system responsible for preferences is separate from the cognitive system responsible for inferences; because early affective processes are automatic and therefore inaccessible to higher-order interventions; and because early affective responses are not represented as conscious feelings. We tested these explanations in two experiments that crossed subliminal affective priming with (mis)attribution manipulations. Both studies found reliable shifts in judgements of neutral stimuli as a result of primes even when subjects were aware that their feelings might not be diagnostic for the judgement at hand. Subjects did not report experiencing any feelings in response to the primes. The obtained affective priming effect was independent of response times and subjective reports of engaging in judgemental corrections. However, the priming effect did prove sensitive to the experimental instructions. We discuss the implications of these findings for the affective primacy hypothesis and the feelings-as-information model.     

Monster character profiling and Chinese classifier cognition: linguistic and conceptual perspectives

In this research, we explored the construal of mythical creatures created out of ordinary animals by approaching the selection of Chinese classifiers zhi and ge. Monster figures as such are viewed ambiguously as an animal or as a novel entity. From the lexico-semantic perspective, we surveyed the co-occurrences of these two classifiers with two Chinese labels commonly used for monsters: guaishou and guaiwu, which provide lexical cues for the finely nuanced difference in (non-)/animate readings respectively. From the conceptual perspective, we examined the acceptability as to the uses of these two classifiers for the monster figures, the structures of which incurred different effects of novelty. We found that the (non-)/animal-like interpretation is encoded by zhi and ge at both the linguistic and conceptual layers. The findings of our work have implications for the relation of language and thought, our understanding of fictional world entities, and our understanding of classifier cognition.     

Temporal inhibition in character identification

Models of information processing tasks such as character identification often do not consider the nature of the initial sensory representation from which task-relevant information is extracted. An important component of this representation is temporal inhibition, in which the response to a stimulus may inhibit, or in some cases facilitate, processing of subsequent stimuli. Three experiments demonstrate the existence of temporal inhibitory processes in information processing tasks such as character identification and digit recall. An existing information processing model is extended to account for these effects, based in part on models from the detection literature. These experiments also discriminate between candidate neural mechanisms of the temporal inhibition. Implications for the transient deficit theory of dyslexia are discussed.     

Agonistic character displacement in social cognition of advertisement signals

Interspecific aggression between sibling species may enhance discrimination of competitors when recognition errors are costly, but proximate mechanisms mediating increased discriminative ability are unclear. We studied behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying responses to conspecific and heterospecific vocalizations in Alston’s singing mouse (Scotinomys teguina), a species in which males sing to repel rivals. We performed playback experiments using males in allopatry and sympatry with a dominant heterospecific (Scotinomys xerampelinus) and examined song-evoked induction of egr-1 in the auditory system to examine how neural tuning modulates species-specific responses. Heterospecific songs elicited stronger neural responses in sympatry than in allopatry, despite eliciting less singing in sympatry. Our results refute the traditional neuroethological concept of a matched filter and instead suggest expansion of sensory sensitivity to mediate competitor recognition in sympatry.     

Transcending the caesura: Reverie,dreaming and counter‐dreaming

The author reflects about our capacity to get in touch with primitive, irrepresentable, seemingly unreachable parts of the Self and with the unrepressed unconscious. It is suggested that when the patient's dreaming comes to a halt, or encounters a caesura, the analyst dreams that which the patient cannot. Getting in touch with such primitive mental states and with the origin of the Self is aspired to, not so much for discovering historical truth or recovering unconscious content, as for generating motion between different parts of the psyche. The movement itself is what expands the mind and facilitates psychic growth. Bion's brave and daring notion of ‘caesura’, suggesting a link between mature emotions and thinking and intra‐uterine life, serves as a model for bridging seemingly unbridgeable states of mind. Bion inspires us to ‘dream’ creatively, to let our minds roam freely, stressing the analyst's speculative imagination and intuition often bordering on hallucination. However, being on the seam between conscious and unconscious, dreaming subverts the psychic equilibrium and poses a threat of catastrophe as a result of the confusion it affords between the psychotic and the non‐psychotic parts of the personality. Hence there is a tendency to try and evade it through a more saturated mode of thinking, often relying on external reality. The analyst's dreaming and intuition, perhaps a remnant of intra‐uterine life, is elaborated as means of penetrating and transcending the caesura, thus facilitating patient and analyst to bear unbearable states of mind and the painful awareness of the unknowability of the emotional experience. This is illustrated clinically.     

On feeling good and getting your way: mood effects on negotiator cognition and bargaining strategies.

Are happy people more likely to be cooperative and successful negotiators? On the basis of the Affect Infusion Model (AIM; Forgas, 1995a). Experiment 1 predicted and found that both good and bad moods had a significant mood-congruent effect on people's thoughts and plans, and on their negotiation strategies and outcomes in both interpersonal and intergroup bargaining. Experiment 2 replicated these results and also showed that mood effects were reduced for persons more likely to adopt motivated processing strategies (scoring high on machiavellianism and need for approval). Experiment 3 confirmed these effects and demonstrated that the mood of the opposition also produced more mood-congruent bargaining strategies and outcomes. The results are discussed in terms of affect priming influences on interpersonal behaviors, and the implications of these findings for real-life cognitive tasks and bargaining encounters are considered.     

Judgments for inaccessible targets: Comparing recognition without identification and the feeling of knowing

Both the recognition-without-identification (RWI) and feeling-of-knowing (FOK) paradigms attempt to tap participants?? sense about a target that is inaccessible. In the case of RWI, participants judge the likelihood that the inaccessible target was studied. In the case of FOKs, participants judge the likelihood that the inaccessible target will be recognized at a later point in time. The present study compared the two using a hybrid paradigm. The patterns of responding differed depending on whether the judgment was of the RWI type or the FOK type. For the former, ratings were significantly higher for studied than for unstudied inaccessible targets (the typical RWI effect). For the latter, ratings were significantly lower for studied than for unstudied inaccessible targets (a reversal of the usual RWI effect). Similarity of the targets and distractors diminished the usual RWI effect, but not its reversal in the FOK situation, suggesting that the bases of the two effects differ. A potential explanation is that when participants judge whether an inaccessible target was presented earlier, they are oriented toward relying on cue familiarity, which should be greater for cues of studied targets, whereas when they judge whether they will recognize an inaccessible target later on, they are oriented toward relying on the accessibility of information, which is greater in the unstudied condition, due to the lack of priming of the targets.     

Associative dreaming: reverie and active imagination

The idea of countertransference has expanded beyond its original meaning of a neurotic reaction to include all reactions of the therapist: affective, bodily, and imaginal. Additionally, Jung's fundamental insight in 'The psychology of the transference' was that a 'third thing' is created in the analysis, but he failed to demonstrate how this third is experienced and utilized in analysis. This 'analytic third', as Ogden names it, is co-created by analyst and analysand in depth work and becomes the object of analysis. Reverie, as developed by Bion and clinically utilized by Ogden, provides a means of access to the unconscious nature of this third. Reverie will be placed on a continuum of contents of mind, ranging from indirect to direct associative forms described as associative dreaming. Active imagination, as developed by Jung, provides the paradigm for a mode of interaction with these contents within the analytic encounter itself. Whether the analyst speaks from or about these contents depends on the capacity of the patient to dream. Classical amplification can be understood as an instance of speaking about inner contents. As the ego of the analyst, the conscious component, relates to unconscious contents emerging from the analytic third, micro-activations of the transcendent function constellate creating an analytic compass.     

Emotion enhances the subjective feeling of remembering, despite lower accuracy for contextual details

Emotion strengthens the subjective experience of recollection. However, these vivid and confidently remembered emotional memories may not necessarily be more accurate. We investigated whether the subjective sense of recollection for negative stimuli is coupled with enhanced memory accuracy for contextual details using the remember/know paradigm. Our results indicate a double-dissociation between the subjective feeling of remembering, and the objective memory accuracy for details of negative and neutral scenes. "Remember" judgments were boosted for negative relative to neutral scenes. In contrast, memory for contextual details and associative binding was worse for negative compared to neutral scenes given a "remember" response. These findings show that the enhanced subjective recollective experience for negative stimuli does not reliably indicate greater objective recollection, at least of the details tested, and thus may be driven by a different mechanism than the subjective recollective experience for neutral stimuli.     

On feeling understood and feeling well: The role of interdependence

The present research examined whether people feel happier and healthier when they feel more understood in daily social interactions. A two-week diary study showed that people reported greater life satisfaction and fewer physical symptoms on days in which they felt more understood by others. Moreover, we found that individuals who tend to see themselves in relations to others (i.e., women or those scored high on interdependent self-construal measure) showed a stronger association between daily felt understanding and daily life satisfaction or physical symptoms. These findings demonstrate that daily social experiences, such as felt understanding, are associated with daily well-being, particularly for individuals with greater interdependent self-construal.     

Cognitive asymmetry and dreaming: lack of relationship

The present study investigated the relationship between cognitive laterality and dream recall, dream characteristics, and eye movement density in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Fifty-two right-handed males, age 20-30 years, were tested on a six-test battery of which three tests measure right hemisphere function and three tests measure left hemisphere function. Based on their performance, 14 subjects were selected for a sleep laboratory study. Each spent 3 experimental nights in the laboratory during which they were awakened from REM sleep for dream reports. Dream reports were scored for bizarreness, emotions, visual elements, and overall "dreamlike" versus "thoughtlike" character. Subjects were awakened from 123 REM periods, of which 96 yielded positive dream reports (78.04%). Neither the rate of recall nor the four evaluation scores were correlated with the laterality scores that were constructed from the six-test battery. Eye movement density during REM sleep was significantly positively correlated with the total performance of the two hemispheres. These results do not support the alleged lateralization of dreaming. In agreement with recent reports in the literature, it is concluded that dreaming cannot be seen as a "right hemisphere" function.     

Connectivity and condensation in dreaming.

Converging developments in the cognitive- and neurosciences have brought Freud's hope of a bridge between psychoanalysis and psychophysiology nearer to hand. This paper concerns the relation between dream construction and memory in terms of these new developments. The neural network architecture of memory structures in the brain is described and illustrated with simple examples. We see how a network is connected and how connection weights vary with experience. The distributed representation stored by the network and its crucial properties for mental functioning are discussed. These concepts are used to explain how particular memories of past events are selected for inclusion in the dream. The properties of the neural network suggest that images of distinct past events are conflated at times during the selection process. The appearance of these conflated images may complicate the matching of day residues with representations of past events in the dream itself. Some likely implications for psychoanalytic theory are explored.